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Send longer messages with Concatenated SMS

A standard SMS text message may usually contain up to 160 characters from the
GSM character set. To overcome this limitation modern mobile phones and many mobile network operators support Concatenated SMS.
This enables longer messages to be split into smaller parts and then recombined on the receiving
device.

How many characters can I send?

When sending a Concatenated SMS message each part reserves 7 bytes for the concatenation header. Consequently the number of characters is reduced to 153 characters per SMS part.

Max. Characters

SMS Messages Required

160

1

306

2

459

3

612

4

765

5

918

6

1071

7

1224

8

1377

9

1530

10

Concatenated SMS and Unicode

A standard SMS text message that includes Unicode characters from non-Latin alphabets supports a maximum of 70 characters. Longer messages containing Unicode characters can also can be sent, in which case a maximum of 67 characters per SMS part is supported.

Sending Concatenated SMS through our SMS gateway

Connection Software supports sending up to 10 message parts as a Concatenated SMS
message. Please be aware that we charge for each message part, not just the single Concatenated SMS message. For example, when you send a message containing 450 GSM characters, we will charge you for 3 SMS messages.

On mobile networks that do not support concatenation, the smaller message parts are delivered
as individual SMS text messages instead of one Concatenated SMS message.